Managing time, spending time: retail trading hours and industriousness in Australia

This article examines retail trading hour legislation through the lens of industriousness. It draws on the work of E.P. Thompson, Jan de Vries and Guy Standing to provide a framework for understanding industriousness in the Australian context. In the nineteenth century, workers resisted time-based exploitation through movements agitating for an eight-hour day and early closing for shops. Legislation to limit shop opening hours was first introduced in the late nineteenth century, quickly spread across Australia and remained in place until the latter decades of the twentieth century. Pressure on trading hour regimes emerged during what de Vries calls the ‘second industrious revolution’, when increasing household participation in the paid workforce made shopping within business hours much more difficult. The role of large retailers in the push for regulation and then, later, deregulation, provides a case study in the agency of firms in the evolving processes of capitalism.